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March 6, 2014

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Ope ning Scullery
Michael Cornthwaite and Future Restaurant
Group's latest endeavor will start slinging
drinks and small plates on the irst loor of
the Ogden around April 1. The venue will
also be connected to a black box theater.
Moving One Man's Trash
The bad news: OMT is ditching its gorgeous
Main Street showroom for a space at 2960
Westwood Drive (units 22 & 23), where it
will open two Saturdays each month and by
appointment. The good news: They're saying
goodbye with a moving sale you won't want
to miss—March 79, noon-6 p.m., stunning
furniture and decor up to 75 percent o .
Moving Alios
Todd VonBastiaans' showroom space is out
of Container Park as of April 1 and heading
back to its former digs at 1217 S. Main St.,
which it will share with the CAC for the next
few months. That means you still have a few
weeks to catch the inal exhibit on Fremont
Street, Valentine's Day Mascular, featuring
punching bag faces, Al Capone's mirror ball
and a Swarovski crystal relective work.
Closed Better Than New boutique
The Arts District rave-wear shop known
for embellished bras and LED every-
thing closed on February 11. A note on its
Facebook page says it will be "coming back
'better' than ever."
Moved Brett Wesley Gallery
The Arts District developer's landmark gal-
lery is out of its glass-walled home at the
corner of Charleston and Casino Center and
into a new corner space at Art Square just a
block away.
Moving Patina Décor
OMT out, Patina in. The vintage furniture/
décor/apparel outlet is heading across
the street to 1300 S. Main St., where it will
spread out and show o even more luscious
design. Hip, hip, you know. –Sarah Feldberg
14 LASVEGASWEEKLY.COM MARCH 612, 2014 FIRST FRIDAY BY LEILA NAVIDI; PATINA BY CHRISTOPHER DEVARGAS
COMMENTS? QUESTIONS? BEEFS? RANTS? LET'S HEAR IT! SHOOT AN EMAIL TO LVWEEKLY GMGVEGAS.COM
AS WE SEE IT…
The evolution of First Friday
seems to spring eternal. A
few months ago, it moved its ofﬁ c-
es into the Emergency Arts build-
ing. Though it had been holding
Downtown meetings for at least
the previous year, this move caught
everyone's attention, because
Emergency Arts is a corner-
stone on East Fremont Street, the
Monopoly board of Zappos CEO
Tony Hsieh's Downtown Project.
Hsieh and partners purchased
First Friday almost three years ago,
and the recent move had people
wondering: Will First Friday, an
art walk/street festival, eventually
uproot from its origins in the Arts
District and move to East Fremont?
That wouldn't be a bad thing for
Downtown Project, of course. It
has a growing cadre of business-
es on Fremont that could use the
once-a-month injection of 25,000-
30,000 people who roam the Arts
District each First Friday.
Back to that in a minute.
The festival also announced this
week that Southern Wine & Spirits
of Nevada is now a First Friday
sponsor. First Friday has always
been a community event. However,
support by Southern Wine, whose
general manager is Larry Ruvo,
founder of Keep Memory Alive
Foundation and the Lou Ruvo
Center for Brain Health, serves
notice that even as it has grown,
the festival remains connected to
its roots.
Spokesman Charles Ressler says
that "as of right now, there are no
plans" to move any part of First
Friday toward Fremont Street. He
calls Southern's sponsorship "a
nod to First Friday as a community
event. Southern Wine & Spirits has
been leading the charge for com-
munity activation for years, and
it's a real testament to the work
we've done with First Friday that
it wants to engage with us."
Ressler adds that Southern
Wine considers First Friday "an
important community event that,
by partnering with us, can be made
into one of the most important in
our city."
Sponsorships are important to
First Friday for another reason.
The event comes with heavy secu-
rity expenses and is reliant in part
on fees collected from artists and
food vendors who lease space dur-
ing the event. Although the festival
already has prominent local spon-
sors—Health Plan of Nevada, for
one—Southern Wine would be a
big hitter. Might that translate into
residents who live in Summerlin
and Henderson taking notice of
what's going on down here?
Downtown residents will cer-
tainly be watching. They'll be ask-
ing if Southern Wine's involvement
with First Friday—which launched
more than a decade ago with just a
few hundred people—coupled with
the recent move into the Emergency
Arts building, might signal a bigger
change—perhaps the eventual shift
of the festival from the Arts District
to East Fremont.
It wouldn't be a complete sur-
prise. When Hsieh and others pur-
chased First Friday in the fall of
2011, the Review-Journal reported
that their intentions included an
expansion to "other Downtown
areas." Wes Myles, who owns the
Arts Factory, considers the idea
inevitable—and he welcomes it.
"I send them a text every month
that says, 'Please, leave us alone,'"
Myles said earlier this week. "We
used to have a nice adult crowd.
Now we have kids." He also isn't
happy about the First Friday food
and other vendors positioned
so close to his restaurant, Bar &
Bistro. "Why would I want that?"
Myles' belief that the move
will happen stems, in part, from
Hsieh's announcement earlier this
year that Downtown Project was
removing "return on community"
from its company literature. Hsieh
said the concept confused people,
adding that Downtown Project is
"not a charity."
Or, as Myles interprets: "'We
have to make money.' Like we
didn't know that."
J O E D O W N T O W N
FESTIVAL IN FLUX
Southern Wine's involvement in First Friday could signal bigger
changes coming B Y J O E S C H O E N M A N N
Joe Schoenmann doesn't just cover Downtown, he lives and works there. He is
Greenspun Media Group's embedded Downtown journalist, stationed at an o ice
in Emergency Arts. His work appears in the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Weekly.
> ARTFUL PARTNERS?
Southern Wine's recently
announced sponsorship
of First Friday could have
far-reaching e ects.
MOVING AND
SHAKING
What's new, what's closed and
what's hitting the road Downtown
14_AWSI_3_20140306_CB.indd 14 3/5/14 1:31 PM